ARCASHA

H E G



SRV

March 31, 2002 - 12:05

I was reading Maddy yesterday. I read her diary, like, a squillion times a day. Anyway, I read her Friday Five entry for this week in her blog and the second question was; �Has the death of a famous person ever had an effect on you? Who was it and how did you feel?� Maddy talked rather poignantly, as she�s wont to do, about Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Later that day, while I was dropping off one of my computers to be fixed at a large warehouse electronics barn (Don�t sneer. If it weren�t on warranty, I wouldn�t take it there) and I happened past the CD/DVD racks. Funny how I happen past there every time I�m in the place. So there�s the latest Stevie Ray Vaughan CD/DVD set�for A HUNDRED and TEN Canadian bucks. Anyway, since I�m feeling a little wealthier now that I have a real job, I grabbed it.

I�ve been a guitar player since I was ten years old and I love the blues but I came to SRV rather late in life � after he�d died, actually. During the eighties, I thought of him as a cheap imitation of Jimi Hendrix. Jimi Hendrix was one of my gods but I had pretty much gotten out of that groove bye the mid-seventies. So I just wasn�t interested.

Well, was I wrong. Stevie�s no imitation of anybody even though he clearly idolized Hendrix and did a lot of his music. Watching the DVD last night had me thinking of how unlike any musician he was. He didn�t PLAY the guitar. He emoted some kind of energy from his Fender that was like a direct channel from the ghosts of all the blues music ever played. It�s like he was speaking in tongues through his Strat.

In my late thirties, I was going through a really bad patch�call it a mid-life crisis, if you will�and I was acting just a bit nuts. Anyway, I got back into my guitar playing and started listening to SRV a lot more closely. Well, I got addicted really quickly to that music and have acquired as many CD�s as I could find. It�s amazing how music can change your perspective.

Stevie�s playing sticks to me like glue. I don�t know if this is normal, but I always have music in my head. There�s a constant flow of tunes in there � some of them are existing songs/tunes/arias and some just make themselves up. But there�s always a Stevie Ray lick in there somewhere. Try to imagine Puccini�s �Nessun Dorma� with a final buildup by SRV. It�s out of this world.

I thought I had everything he�d ever recorded, including the Austin City video, but the discography shows a few that I haven�t got. The DVD was a bit of a disappointment, though. There are only six tunes. My VHS copy has more than that so I guess I won�t be ditching that too soon.

Anyway�Has the death of a famous person ever had an effect on me? Sure, but it wasn�t Stevie Ray Vaughan. Although, if he�d died last year or something, I�d have been devastated.

Arc

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